Grift Sense

by James Swain

  “What are you doing?”

  “Quitting,” Valentine said.

  “What?!”

  “You heard me.”

  “You can't run out on me now. I need you.”

  “You got yourself into this mess,” Valentine said, “and you deserve whatever you get.”

  Nick's pug face hardened. He pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and chewed on it furiously. “You having a bad day or something?”

  “It's running neck and neck with yours.”

  Nick's expression changed. Misery was something he understood all too well. Scooping the money off the floor, he wiped it on his pants, then handed it back to Valentine.

  “You win.”

  “Meaning what?” Valentine asked.

  “Meaning I'm sorry.”

  Valentine put the money back into his wallet.

  “I'm still leaving,” he told his employer.

  “But—”

  “You hired me to finger Fontaine, and I did, and now it's time to go.”

  “But you haven't found Nola . . .”

  Valentine shrugged. His son needed him more than Nola Briggs did, and so did Mabel, and they mattered more to him than all the tea in China. He'd started entertaining the thought of taking a cruise with them and found it oddly appealing.

  “She'll turn up,” Valentine said.

  A tired look spread across Nick's face. His waterbed had not been touched by the flames, and he plopped down on the mattress. Streams of water shot up all around him, soaking the ceiling.

  “That little bitch!” he roared.

  Valentine got some towels from the bathroom and helped Nick dry off. By the time they were done, Nick was cracking jokes and reminiscing about an old flame who'd tried to run him over with her car. When it came to bad relationships, he had no equal, and Valentine couldn't help but like him, even though he liked practically nothing about him.

  “Look,” Nick said a few minutes later, residing on the heart-shaped couch, “how about we strike a deal?”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “If Fontaine is going to rip me off, he'll probably do it tonight—you told me so yourself.”

  “That's right.”

  “Without Sammy around, I'm vulnerable. Hang around and I'll pay you five grand.”

  “I've got to leave, Nick.”

  “I'm talking about a night's work.”

  “Sorry,” Valentine said.

  Nick chewed his unlit stogie, thinking. “You got a seat on a plane?”

  Valentine hadn't thought that far ahead; he shook his head no. Pulling out his cell phone, Nick said, “A hundred bucks says you can't find one.”

  Using Nick's phone book, Valentine called the various airlines. The first plane out was tomorrow night. He'd forgotten that Las Vegas drew the crowds like no other city in the world.

  “I lease a private jet,” Nick told him. “You want it—it's yours.”

  “What's the catch?” Valentine said.

  “They require twelve hours' notice.”

  Valentine looked at his watch. It was nearly three. If Nick's jet was the fastest way out of town, then he owed it to Gerry and Mabel to take it. Even if he was ready to pack it in.

  Nick poked him in the arm. “So what do you say? Deal?”

  “Okay,” he mumbled.

  Nick punched him in the biceps, sealing the agreement.

  Walking through the hole in the wall in Nick's suite, they stood in the backyard and inspected the damage. By the pool, a statue of Michelangelo's David had been castrated with a blunt object. Finding the stone penis in the grass, Nick pocketed it.

  “I think you ought to consider putting some special security measures into play at your casino tonight,” Valentine said.

  Nick eyed him. “What kind of measures?”

  “Add more security but tell Wily not to let them on the floor until the casino is packed. That way they'll blend in.”

  “Okay,” Nick said.

  “You should also stagger your shifts in the surveillance control room,” Valentine said. “Let the team that knocks off at midnight leave an hour early and replace them with fresh people.”

  “How come?”

  “Most scams in casinos go down during shift changes. People are going home; others are coming in. It's easy to get distracted and not watch the monitors for a few minutes. Fontaine knows this.”

  “You've got this all figured out, haven't you?”

  Valentine nodded solemnly. He knew exactly how Frank Fontaine thought—not that it had ever done him any good.

  “What about Nola?” Nick said.

  “Nick, she's as guilty as the day is long.”

  Nick winced, his face turning sour. “You're sure?”

  “One hundred percent positive sure,” Valentine said.

  Nick took the stone penis out of his pocket and examined it. His face had a faraway look, the memory of her still haunting him. The penis seemed the perfect metaphor for the life he'd led. He took a running start before pitching it over the hedges.

  23

  Leaving Hoss and Tiny to guard his smoldering domicile, Nick drove Valentine down the block to a neighbor's gated driveway, buzzed himself in, and parked in the shadows of an elegant Tudor mansion. Behind the house sat a gleaming Sikorsky on a helipad, a blond pilot wearing Ray-Bans posed smartly by the door.

  “We'll never reach the Strip by car,” Nick explained. “Too many tourists. This is the only way to go.”

  They crossed the lawn, and Valentine spotted a bald, heavyset man lying on a towel by the pool. A curvaceous miss with red floss riding up the crack in her behind knelt beside him, giving him a rubdown. Nick whistled wolfishly and the woman looked up. The bald man turned his head, ignoring them.

  “Who's he?” Valentine asked.

  “Some hotshot surgeon,” Nick replied. “Dropped a hundred grand playing craps in my casino one night. Turned out he was in debt and couldn't pay his marker. I could've foreclosed on his place, but I figured he's a neighbor, so I let him work it off. His yard man does my lawn, I use his chopper when I want, and I bang his wife when he's out of town.”

  “You're kidding me,” Valentine said.

  “Thousand bucks' credit a whack,” Nick said, winking at him.

  “Hope you didn't give her a house key.”

  “Stop picking on me.”

  Nick exchanged high-fives with the grinning pilot. His name was Ken, and when they were strapped in and had headsets on, Ken took the chopper up and made a beeline for the Strip, the colorful casinos spread out before them like an overturned pirate's chest. Valentine had ridden in plenty of choppers and knew the pitfalls of staring at stationary objects for more than a few seconds at a time. You threw up. So he kept his eyes shut and held on to the door.

  “I want to show my friend something,” Nick told Ken. “Think your boss will mind if we take a side trip?”

  Ken laughed loudly.

  A minute later, Ken dropped down near a desolate trailer park on the north end of town. Climbing out, Valentine followed Nick down a dusty dirt road that dissected a honeycomb of dilapidated trailers. A shirtless migrant and his snarling dog emerged to stare at them.

  After a half mile, the trailer park ended and so did the road. A sea of numbered graves lay before them. It was a pauper's field. The plots were laid out haphazardly, the final punishment for dying broke. Nick zigzagged down a narrow path, walking quickly between graves. Valentine did a tightrope walk behind him as he tried to avoid stepping on the dead.

  In the corner of the cemetery sat a manicured plot with a decorative headstone. Kneeling at the grave site, Nick crossed himself and mumbled a prayer. Valentine crossed himself as well, squinting to read the tombstone.

  James Dandalos

  “The Greek”

  6/4/10–9/12/94

  “If it's worth doing,

  it's worth overdoing.”

  “My mentor,” Nick explained, getting up and fishing a black hundred-dollar chip fro
m his pocket. “I came out here in sixty-five and the Greek took me under his wing. He was a real gambler, maybe the best who's ever lived. One night we went out and won forty grand playing craps. We bought a car and decided to press our luck at the tables. We lost all our dough, then went out and wrecked the car. It was the best lesson I ever learned.”

  Nick dug a hole and buried the chip, patting the ground smooth when he was done. “I told the Greek that gambling full time was a losing proposition. The house was always going to win. He laughed and said the only way to make money in a casino is to own one.”

  “So you went and bought one.”

  “As soon as I could scrape the money together.”

  “He must have died pretty broke to end up here.”

  “Four million in the hole, not counting what he owed me,” Nick said, wiping the sand off his knees. “He died a John Doe. I didn't find out he was gone until he was already in the ground.”

  “How much do you think he lost over the years?”

  Nick laughed. “Thirty million, forty, maybe more.”

  “You'd think someone could have given him a proper burial.”

  “The Greek lived large and died small,” Nick said fondly. “He wouldn't have wanted it any other way.”

  Ten minutes later, the Sikorsky dropped them off at the Mirage's helipad, which was jointly used by several casinos on the Strip. Out of principle, Nick would not step foot in his competitor's establishment, so they walked clear around the mammoth hotel. It was a good hike, and by the time they reached the Acropolis's front doors, they were both dripping with perspiration.

  “Look at all these people,” Nick said gleefully.

  The front doors were propped open, and a long line of tourists waiting to play One-Armed Billy snaked past the valet stand. Like a politician, Nick began pumping the flesh and handing out comps for free meals. Two minutes later, everyone in line was beaming, and Nick and Valentine entered the casino to a round of applause.

  The casino floor was a madhouse of noise and blinking lights and people yelling at the roll of the dice or the turn of a single card. There was the sound of a hundred silver dollars hitting a metal tray, of a man in a baseball cap having won twenty grand bluffing at poker, of fortunes won and bankrolls lost. By the time they reached the elevators, Nick was walking on air.

  “You see that action?” he said when the doors had closed and they were rising. “Nothing like a prizefight to get people to open their wallets. We'll gross two, maybe three million, easy.”

  Which was what Fontaine was counting on, Valentine thought as the elevator raced to the twelfth floor. So much money coming in at once that it blinded you—the perfect misdirection for a heist.

  Nick called Wily once he reached his suite. The disheveled pit boss came upstairs in a suit so wrinkled it looked slept in. In an exhausted voice, he read the numbers off a spreadsheet.

  “Since noon, we've done five hundred big ones on blackjack, three eighty on the slots, eighty-five on the wheel, sixty on pai gow, and fifty on craps.”

  “What's the take on Billy?” Nick asked. He'd parked himself in a recliner in the living room and was sucking on an O'Doul's.

  “We've emptied him out twice already,” Wily said.

  “Beautiful,” Nick said. “Listen. Tony wants to put some special security measures into play tonight. Just in case Fontaine shows his face.”

  Valentine explained to Wily what he wanted done. The pit boss brightened, sensing a trap being set.

  “You think we'll nail him?” Wily asked.

  “Only if you stay on your toes,” Nick told him.

  Wily's shoulders sagged, as if the weight of what he was being asked to handle was too great. He excused himself to the john. When he returned, his hair was parted and his tie had a fresh knot.

  “No one's going to rip us off while I'm on duty,” he announced.

  Nick ushered him to the door. “Tony and I are going to the fights. Call me on my cell phone if anything comes up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I'm depending on you.”

  “I won't let you down,” the pit boss said resolutely.

  “Go make my money grow,” Nick said.

  The orange message light on his phone was blinking when Valentine returned to his suite a few minutes later.

  There was only one message. Gerry.

  “Hey, Pop—just wanted to give you a status report. I'm still in New York. Those goons rammed my car on the FDR Drive; I got off in Midtown and left the car in a garage by the UN. I thought about calling the cops, but since I've got a record, well, you know . . .”

  “Hang tough,” his father said into the phone.

  “I got ahold of Pee Wee, told him to shut down the bar, so I guess you're getting your wish—no more bookmaking for me. Ha-ha. Anyway, Yolanda is going to pick me up in about twenty minutes and we're going to hit the Jersey shore. I'll call you when I get settled in, let you know where I'm staying. And Pop, I'm sorry about Mabel. I keep thinking about her down there in jail. . . . It's eating at me, you know?”

  Gerry was sorry about Mabel. Valentine couldn't remember his son ever being sorry about anything.

  “And Pop, I guess I should be mad at you, but I'm not. I mean, what goes around comes around, you know? I mean, what I'm trying to say is, I guess I'm getting a taste of what I've put you through over the years, and it doesn't taste very good. I'll call you.”

  The line went dead. He considered playing the message again, just to hear Gerry eat crow a second time, but he erased it instead. Once was more than enough.

  He sat on the edge of his bed and thought back to Nick's burying the chip for the Greek, a guy who died owing him lots of money. How far do you go for the ones you love? All the way, he realized.

  “Undercard starts in twenty minutes,” Nick said, having materialized in Valentine's doorway. “There's a welterweight fighting who I've got money on.”

  Nick had changed into white slacks and a purple silk shirt, his snowy chest hair contrasting sharply with the jet-black mop on his head. Around his neck hung several thick gold ropes.

  “Give me a minute,” Valentine said.

  Nick let out a disapproving howl when Valentine emerged from the bedroom sixty seconds later.

  “You can't go to the fights dressed like that!” his host exclaimed. “You look like a cop! Everybody will shun us.”

  It was the last set of clean clothes Valentine had.

  “I'm open to suggestions,” he said.

  “Bag everything but the pants,” Nick told him. “You can wear some of my clothes.”

  The clothes Nick had in mind were classic seventies hoodlum attire; a skintight, bloodred silk shirt and a creamy linen sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons and wide pointy lapels. Standing in the dressing room in Nick's suite, Valentine grimaced at his reflection in the mirror. Put some grease in his hair and he could pass for one of Moe Greene's henchmen in The Godfather.

  Nick tapped his watch. “Let's get moving. I've got two grand riding on my boy winning inside three rounds.”

  Valentine followed him out of the suite. By the door, Nick stopped and pointed at a framed head shot of Elvis Presley on the bookshelf. The inscription read To Nick—you're the greatest! Elvis.

  “I helped him once,” Nick explained.

  They went into the hall and waited for an elevator.

  “How?” Valentine asked.

  “I'd just opened,” Nick said. “This was back in '70. Elvis worked the main room, packed the place every show. It was like printing money. Cha-ching! One night he was in his suite and he saw something on the TV that got him pissed off, so he shot it. Bullet went through the wall—nearly killed the couple next door.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I had the screen replaced.”

  “What?!”

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “You repaired the TV for him?”

  “Sure. What else could I do?”

  Nick's
logic escaped him. Calling the police would have been one solution. Getting him some good psychiatric help another.

  “What set him off?”

  A blue-haired couple wearing matching polyester outfits stepped off the elevator, their Midwestern voices raised in agitation. The woman, who appeared to be getting the worst of it, wagged a disapproving finger in her companion's face.

  “Stop making me out to be the big loser,” she said.

  “Well,” the elderly man said, “you are.”

  “I lost four hundred playing keno,” she practically shouted. “You lost four thousand playing craps.”

  “Yeah,” her companion said, “but I know how to gamble.”

  The couple disappeared into one of the suites. Nick and Valentine got into the elevator and Nick punched the Lobby button. The doors closed and they started to descend.

  “He was watching Robert Goulet,” Nick said.

  24

  On their way out the door, Nick ducked into One-Armed Billy's brightly lit alcove. The giant slot machine was idle, and the little Greek planted his lips on his favorite employee. Sitting on his stool, Joe Smith chuckled silently.

  “Billy was the smartest thing I ever did,” Nick confided to Valentine. “Every day, rain or shine, Billy makes money.”

  “You can't beat that,” Valentine said.

  Outside, Nick's monogrammed golf cart was parked at the valet stand, a perspiring O'Doul's in the drink holder. Valentine got into the passenger seat, then held on for dear life as Nick floored the accelerator and sped down the Acropolis's front entrance.

  The Strip was jammed, the mob rivaling New Year's in Times Square. Nick darted in and out of traffic, hopped a median, and ran a red light, all for the sake of traveling a few short blocks. When they reached Caesars' entrance, he hit the brakes and nearly sent Valentine through the windshield. A line of stretch limousines blocked traffic in both directions. Spinning the wheel, Nick hopped the cart onto the sidewalk with his hand on the cart's Harpo Marx horn.

  “I've got a sick man here,” he announced to a sharply dressed contingent in their path. “Gangway, folks.”